But you don't use resources to help people who are forced to leave their country and now are drowning in the sea.
Occasionally we can see here on HN stories about lost sailors being rescued after weeks lost in the water, or shipwrecked on some remote rock. The common theme for those stories is that there wasn't a bunch of ships that went looking for them for weeks. For every person who survived such event, many more died.
When there is a lot of media coverage you also tend to get more reaction by officials, which then generate even more media coverage. It is the same concept why a individual can create a story on HN and reach people at google/facebook/apple, while thousands of users can have an identical situation and never reach a single person from support. It not a fair system but its a very well understood phenomenon.
The response on sending rescue teams was high even before it got popular on the news. I remember reading some statements that "we sent everything we can" in the very first news.
The problem is that there's no immediate feedback when they go missing so the search areas are too pointlessly large to even attempt SAR operations. Areas where there's lots of immigration traffic are always monitored, like the Greeks were monitoring the boat before it capsized (enough to get that aerial photo of the overcrowded decks).
The vast majority of Coast Guards aren't stretched to their limits, they're sitting there ready to launch SAR operations if anyone calls, all largely operating for free as a cheap way of supporting maritime trade. The USCG alone responds to tens of thousands of cases a year, rescuing thousands of people. Some corrupt nations skimp on their CGs but that wasn't really the case here.
The Titan was A, your average fishing boat or other vessel is B. And all those migrants are, and that pisses me off to an incredible degree, C.
The average human can't tread that long without a life jacket, the average is ~2-3 hours and that's in still water (to be a lifeguard you have to last 30 minutes), not a choppy ocean/sea. By the time any country other than Italy or Greece came to the location, they'd already be dead. It's tragic, but there is no discrepancy. If there were a chance of actual survival for days, there would have been a much larger response.
Also, apparently the Greeks offered aid before the boat even sank and the boat declined because they didn't want to go to Greece, they wanted to go to Italy. There are mixed reports on that though as now some are blaming the Greek coast guard for tipping the boat over by accident.
If you want something to be upset about, be upset about practically every country on Earth's broken immigration systems that cause these tragic events.
Regarding the US Navy, well, they do have a Fleet in the Mediterranean, it's not like they had to sail all the way from Pearl Harbour.
Also, what people also forget, the Mediterranean is under almost comlkete surveillance. So no big surprise if a vessel goes down, most of the time authorities knew of said vessel before.
And some lights to try if it gets dark.